


Latency Period

by fascinationex



Series: naruto works by fascinationex [11]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Het Relationship, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Meet-Cute, Second Shinobi War, Sort Of, Tsunade feels, Tsunade-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-26
Updated: 2019-05-26
Packaged: 2020-03-17 14:20:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18966970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fascinationex/pseuds/fascinationex
Summary: Tsunade wasn't sure what was going to come out of her mouth when she finally slowed, but when she did all she got was a choked, ragged: "Nawaki?"





	Latency Period

The message came after midday. 

The rain that had been threatening in the sticky air all week had turned the sky dark, and when it finally fell it was cold and heavy. It streamed against the window panes and glittered where it was caught in Jiraiya's white hair.

"Oh." At first Tsunade felt nothing at all.

Jiraiya continued to watch her over the stack of outdated mission reports that she was supposed to be approving. He gently put Nawaki's death notice on top.

"I'm so sorry," he said. Everyone was really good at saying that now. Jiraiya had a particular gift for the appearance of sincerity. 

In this case, he may even have been sincere. It was hard to tell.

"Thank you," she said blankly.

Jiraiya fixed his attention on her like he was waiting for ...something more. She didn't know what that was supposed to be. Was she meant to say something to reassure _him_?

It had been Nawaki's birthday only yesterday. She'd hugged him. He'd told her not to coddle him, that he was too old now for gifts and celebrations. 

Tsunade... struggled to integrate the new information. 

No more birthdays, she thought distantly. No more Nawaki.

No... more Nawaki. 

"Okay." She put the death notice aside, out of the way of her work. Orochimaru had signed it in his sharp, elegant, and typically half-legible calligraphy. That was right, Nawaki had been in his command. 

She glanced at it again. Incendiary device. Interred... 

She knew that outpost.

Tsunade looked at the notice for a second more. Somewhere a clock ticked. It was an oddly heavy sound in the quiet of their breathing and the rainfall.

She got to her feet and put her haori on properly. She shoved her chair in with one knee and left the room, then the building.

Jiraiya had longer legs and kept pace easily, even when Tsunade's feelings caught up with her and she broke into a jog, then a sprint. The ground disappeared under her feet. A ninja at the gates looked up, saw her face, and let her leave unchallenged.

The forest in part of fire country wasn't singing with Hashirama's chakra, but the trees were big and sturdy, and the outpost was close to the one she'd been at.

Tsunade knew where they kept the bodies. This was a familiar outpost, one she had used it as a fallback position before.

She dropped from the trees and her feet hit the ground hard, fast, _thud thud thud_. Her breathing was too harsh for the run she'd just had. She felt wild and out of control.

Orochimaru was waiting outside the building, under an overhang that protected him from the rain. He was a stark figure in the rain, a ghost-pale face peering out from the grey and black of his surroundings. He looked as though he'd been waiting for her. 

She wasn't sure what was going to come out of her mouth when she finally slowed, but when she did all she got was a choked, ragged: "Nawaki?"

"Yes. Nawaki is dead," he said, watching her. He did not euphemise: there was no 'we lost him', no 'he passed away', no 'we couldn't save him'.

The words fell upon her like a blow. So Tsunade did what she always did under a blow: she stood straighter. She lifted her chin. She looked at the doors to their dismal little mortuary.

She had to see.

"I don't think..." Jiraiya grabbed her shoulder. 

His hand was light and warm right through her clothing in the rain. She could have torn free. Nothing could hold her unless she let it. Tsunade stopped. 

She turned her head, just far enough to see his facial expression. Whatever was on her face, it made him flinch and look away. 

"Maybe you... uh, shouldn't see the body," Jiraiya said slowly.

Tsunade's heart beat harder. Her breath stalled. 

"Let her," said Orochimaru. His voice was steady, conversational, but he, too, didn't seem to want to look at her -- and worse, his mouth was twisted in a familiar way.

Her lungs felt like hot, heavy steel in her chest. They wouldn't expand, they wouldn't contract. Her breath rasped through her mouth. 

Jiraiya made a wordless noise of protest in his throat.

"The body is not something that's recognisable as her brother," Orochimaru continued.

"Orochimaru," hissed Jiraiya, whose hand was shaking on her shoulder now, "stop it!" 

It wasn't Jiraiya's hand shaking, she realised suddenly. Her whole body was. She was trembling with an overwhelming, full-body emotional response. She wasn't even sure what the feeling was -- was it horror? Rage? Grief?

Orochimaru did not stop. "Well," he said philosophically, "that's how ninja end up, in the end. There's nobody to save them on the battlefield, is there?"

The rain seemed deafening. 

"Stop now," Tsunade said, sounding terribly distant to herself. Could she even be heard over the rain?

Orochimaru's yellow eyes tracked her mouth. 

He drew his hand out of his sleeve and from it hung that stupid crystal necklace, the legacy of the first Hokage.

And from then, Tsunade remembered, forever, with perfect -- crystal, she might say -- clarity the way it looked, dangling from his deathly pale fingers. From then on, whenever she thought of Nawaki's death, this was what she'd imagine: that necklace, hanging, and Orochimaru's flat, expressionless eyes behind it. 

He did not stop. Orochimaru had never once stopped doing something just because someone else said he should. Usually that was just encouragement.

"At least it's easy to keep children happy." He looked at the crystal of it critically, unharmed and gleaming in the light of the overcast skies, while Nawaki -- while her brother -- 

Tsunade's eyes drifted to the doorway again. Her jaw clenched.

"Especially just the day after they receive a gift..." 

" _Orochimaru!_ " snarled Jiraiya. His fingers went tight on her shoulder and his whole body jerked in an abortive surge towards Orochimaru. Probably, Tsunade thought, to smack him in the face. It was hard to be this obnoxious with a broken jaw. 

Orochimaru didn't even tense. 

Unrecognisable, he'd said. Tsunade slapped Jiraiya's hand off, lifted her chin and moved forward. 

"That's mine," she growled. She snatched the necklace from Orochimaru on the way past, so fast and viciously that he might have lost a finger had he been any less deft.

Tsunade hung it about her own neck and let the crystal fall, gleaming and smooth, into the valley between her breasts.

Her heels slammed into the stone floors: crack, crack, crack. Outside, lightning burst across the sky, bright and searing.

She could hear Orochimaru murmur something behind her, low and insinuating, and then the short, sharp scuffling sound that meant Jiraiya had finally taken the bait.

She did not look back.

Tsunade shoved the doors to their dingy charnel house open with the shriek of tearing metal and an enormous echoing bang. They may, she realised belatedly, have been locked and barred. That would explain the noise.

"Show me," she demanded in a clear and ringing voice -- over the crash of the door falling from its hinges, over the rumble of thunder and right through the sound of the howling wind. 

The technicians did not argue with her. 

Nawaki's face was gone. His hair had burnt up. His fingers were blackened to the bone and his feet were gone, sloughed away -- even the bones of his legs were brittle and charred. 

But Orochimaru underestimated the intimacies of knowing someone like family. Yes, she thought, looking at the things she could yet see. There were shapes, notches in bones -- she turned him (it, she turned _it_ , that, the remains, the thing) just enough to see the giant scar on his back that she knew would be there, beneath the inconsistent pattern of damage to its skin.

Yes, she thought, this was Nawaki.

The technicians hung back.

Tsunade breathed deeply. It smelled of chemical cleaners that blended with, rather than drowned out, the persistent reek of decay. It was a potent mix.

The outward breath slowed her heart.

It seemed incredible that it still beat at all. 

"Thank you," she said after a long, still moment, staring, blank-faced, too proud to show her belly even to these disinterested strangers. Outside the storm raged.

* * *

Tsunade came as a petitioner. She brought all the weight of her clan name and accomplishments with her. She also brought everything else she was: Young. Female. Pretty. Bereaved. 

Jiraiya came with her, and was about as useful as he usually was -- but he was a warm body, big and supportive, quiet in the seat beside her when she stood up to speak.

"A minimum of one quarter of our forces need to be cross-trained as medics," she told them bluntly, standing straight, breathing deep and steady. "One medic in every team of four -- at least in the long term missions, and those without access to lines back to us. It will stop our ninja from dying."

"There's not enough time," the village council said. 

"We understand your position," said an old man, who had clearly not seen the field of battle for some time, "and we are very sorry for your recent loss--"

"I am not here because of my 'loss'," Tsunade said, although she definitely was. Jiraiya slouched further in his seat and hummed softly. It was low enough not to be heard by the council members, but Tsunade felt it scrape on her nerves. _Shut up_ , she thought savagely.

"That's as may be," said one of the councilors, in a tone that suggested he believed her as little as Jiraiya did -- as little as she, herself, did. His mouth formed a sympathetic smile. "And we can agree, in principle, with the idea -- but we have no infrastructure for that kind of organisation, and we don't know enough." 

"The middle of a war is not the right time, perhaps, for these... innovations."

Tsunade ground her teeth. "Perhaps," she said, "we would have more time and manpower if our ninja weren't dying so often."

There was a brief and acutely uncomfortable silence, punctuated only by the soft tick of a clock.

Tsunade felt like she was ancient and hard and brittle, like all her cracks were beginning to show where anyone could see them.

She hooked her fingers around her grandfather's necklace, tugging gently. She breathed out slowly and looked to Sarutobi-sensei. Surely, she thought, he could see the need for this. Surely. 

But in the end even Sarutobi told her, regretful and sympathetic but firm, and apparently oblivious to the burn of her grief and rage and humiliation: 

"We don't have the resources, or the knowledge. And, Tsunade... the enemy won't wait for us."

'The enemy won't wait for us,' she mouthed to herself, repeating it incredulously as though that would help her process it better. 'The enemy won't wait for us'. As though she needed to be told -- as though she hadn't been on the front lines since the war started. 

Tsunade -- and Jiraiya, and Orochimaru, and -- _and Nawaki_ \-- had been on the front lines more often than Sarutobi, lately. 

But here he was, and here he looked at her and regretfully informed her, as though she may perhaps not have noticed, that their enemy would not politely wait for them to train competent field medics.

She felt her whole body change temperature, but she wasn't sure if she was hot or cold. Her chakra roiled, unsettled. Her fists clenched.

Jiraiya snorted. When she glanced at him, he didn't look thrilled by this development either. He looked -- tense, although he was hiding it better.

The cynical expression on his face meant that she wasn't the only one offended.

Tsunade breathed carefully. She could see the eyes narrowing around the room, analysing her and all the signs of her anger. Some of them were already dismissive -- they saw her grieving, angry, _emotionally compromised_ , and had already stopped listening. A grieving, irrational sister.

She wished, futilely, that Jiraiya would say something. They might listen better to him.

"I'm aware of that, old man," she began, bristling, annoyed all over again because her voice was starting to sound harsh and ragged. Her breath was coming hard.

She felt her belly and face grow warm with the beginnings of a really tremendous rage. The edge of the table creaked under her fingers. "But--"

"I agree with her," said a voice, loud and clear, cutting through what might have been a truly spectacular tirade.

Tsunade's head whipped around, sending her ponytail swinging over her shoulder and into Jiraiya's nose. He sputtered and batted it away, but their team all had long hair and they were all used to getting it everywhere. 

"Kato," murmured one of the councilors. He didn't sound thrilled. 

Dan, Tsunade thought. His name was Kato Dan. A jounin. His pale hair must have had something faintly blue in it somewhere, because it glowed white under the yellow lights, like a halo around his serious face. 

"I agree with her," he repeated, strident and clear like a bell. "Tsunade is right."

Tsunade blinked slowly.

She was, but she hadn't -- she hadn't expected anybody else to acknowledge it. She'd expected to have to _fight_ for it.

He was pretty, she realised with a strange lurch in her guts. As a thought, it felt utterly inimical to the towering black rage that had moved in and signed a tenancy agreement months ago, and which had not relented since. 

"To ignore the need for battlefield medics is to waste the sacrifice of the ninja who died to bring us this far," he said, "when we should be respecting that, and learning from it." 

Amazing how people got more interesting, and smarter, the more they agreed with her.

"Uh-oh," murmured Jiraiya, soft and singsong -- and in a teasing tone that much belied the comment. The idiot was watching her like a hawk. (And he was not, unfortunately, quite that much of an idiot.)

"Shut up," she hissed under her breath, leaning forward to get a better look at Kato Dan -- all the better to appreciate the curve of his lips as he told everyone how extremely correct Tsunade was.

His good looks and good sense aside, Dan's support meant they had to stop clucking their tongues and treating her demands like they were the product of grief alone. 

When the meeting was over she followed him out. She wanted to meet him properly, and she knew she needed the distraction -- and he was, after all, very pretty. 

And -- 

"I was so relieved," he told her, earnest, meeting her eyes in the dim light of the street where she'd caught up with him.

His gleamed green and deep, and so sincere she wondered at it, wondered that anyone had made it to his rank with such an open and willing heart. "I was so relieved that somebody else had spoken up." 

_Yes,_ thought Tsunade, feeling, for once, perfectly understood by a stranger, _I know_.

**Author's Note:**

> If you're into a heavily Tsunade centric story that fills in some gaps and then diverges pretty hard from canon, the "pathogenesis" series might be something you'll be into.
> 
> If there was something you liked about this fic and you're inclined to comment, please feel free to let me know.
> 
> A link to this fic post on twitter, since I no longer have the tumblr [ [x]](https://twitter.com/fascination_ex/status/1132464559573196800)


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